Like Kim Jong-un in a basketball game, Dennis Rodman on North Korean soil is a child in a candy store.
Both are wrapped up in their little world, basking in the attention of a rapt audience, never mind that it’s largely one of contempt rather than admiration.
But love them or loathe them, they’re probably the most closely watched BFF these days.
In their odd relationship, they outwardly profess brotherly love for each other and pure affection for the game. Nothing else matters.
Inwardly, they have their own agenda.
Kim, the 31-year-old inheritor of a secretive, oppressive dynasty his grandfather built, is only beginning to grasp the nettle of absolute power after taking over from his late father, Kim Jong-il.
Yet, in short order, the younger Kim has managed to rattle his neighbors with his nuclear toys, thumb his nose on his one and only benefactor (China), dispatch his once-powerful uncle to the executioner and dangle trophy captives on the West.
He’s loving it. The most brazen display of dictatorial power is somehow whited out by the media glare. Murder and mayhem are invisible under the bright lights of basketball.
Rodman calls it basketball diplomacy, and for want of a better description, we shall leave it at that.
But let’s not forget a few significant details about him.
Rodman is a retired NBA star living off his past glory. Little in the present makes him a compelling commodity and still less suggests a future comparable to those of the basketball greats of his time.
After an accounting of his considerable NBA career, all that’s left to remember him by are creepy body piercings, dark gold glasses beneath a signature baseball cap and a large ego.
Sure, hordes of fans, Filipinos included, will jump at this characterization of their idol, but that’s just the nature of partisanship. One man’s hero is another man’s heel.